Some more music for quarantaine days
Anubis - Homeless
I follow Anubis since their debut album 230503 from 2009. This australian band plays neo prog with some 80's pop music seemingly blended in mainly due to the vocals. They managed to come to Europe twice and I am pleased to have witnessed two sensational 2.5 hour plus shows first in de Boerderij cafe stage and a few years later in 't Blok. In the past I called them already a hope for the future of progrock So yes I am a fanboy and slightly biased. Now they are back with their fifth studo album Homeless. When you thought that Anubis repeats the same trick, you are wrong. While all albums had something different to them, this definitely is their to the point straight forward album. Gone are the epics over 15 or even ten minutes. We now get 9 songs which apart from opener Reflective all last around four to five minutes. And do I like this compacter style? yes you bet. Because even in shorter songs, Anubis remain challenging and interesting. I can not really mention one favorite song, but suggest you give them a try and I meanwhile hope that 2021 can bring them back to Europe.
Hypnotic Nausea - The Death Of All Religions
It is interesting how I visited Greece, finding a cancelled festival and suddenly interesting Greek Progmetal bands find me. Hypnotic Nausea passed by me without me knowing and it turns out this was my bad. On their bandcamp page someone called them a blend of Queensryche and Tool. Well I can hear the latter mainly in the heavy bass being present. Queensryche not so much, also because that band did not release many long instrumentals. This album contains quite a few and even 11 minute opener Holy City almost hits the 8 minute mark before a voice kicks in. So is this mainly instrumental music interesting enough to keep your attention close? Yes it is, although it might not be for the impatient. When we arrive at The Priest this album shows it might also atract stoner fans. Actually that is also the case for some shorter instrumentals. The title track is where matters calm down, before final long song Inquietum Cor closes the album in style. This is a 2019 release, but the title of the album was predicting 2020. The Death of all Religions, seems to be right now that even in these days of world crisis all churches and mosques appear to be pretty empty.
Novena - Eleventh Hour
I was drawn towards Novena as their vocalist is Ross Jennings of Haken fame. Well that is one of the vocals, as next to his clean voice Gareth Mason (Slice the Cake) gives us some grunts through the album. Apparently this band released an EP four years ago, but I missed that one completely. Further in spite of members having a past in progmetal or even tech death this album is released on Frontiers Records, known for their melodic hard rock albums and keeping the eighties alive. I saw two clips posted by Frontiers for Disconnected and Sundance and thought lets try this out and I ordered the CD. Now hear comes the shock: Frontiers made some sort of inverse marketing campaign. The two songs mentioned are by far the least interesting ones on the album. The last five songs are amazing and make this album a candidate for ending very high on my end of year list. Corazon, manages to mix flamenco handclapping with a Spanish female vocalist next to very strong progmetal. Closing song Prison Walls is an epic, which might even have been stronger as it would have ended after the wild and heavy eruption atround the 11-12 minute mark. This album was a very positive surprise especially after the clips posted. Only comment might be the lyrics are at times impossible to follow with so many paralel singing and tiny letters over pictures, but that might just be old man me. Must hear album of the month. .
I follow Anubis since their debut album 230503 from 2009. This australian band plays neo prog with some 80's pop music seemingly blended in mainly due to the vocals. They managed to come to Europe twice and I am pleased to have witnessed two sensational 2.5 hour plus shows first in de Boerderij cafe stage and a few years later in 't Blok. In the past I called them already a hope for the future of progrock So yes I am a fanboy and slightly biased. Now they are back with their fifth studo album Homeless. When you thought that Anubis repeats the same trick, you are wrong. While all albums had something different to them, this definitely is their to the point straight forward album. Gone are the epics over 15 or even ten minutes. We now get 9 songs which apart from opener Reflective all last around four to five minutes. And do I like this compacter style? yes you bet. Because even in shorter songs, Anubis remain challenging and interesting. I can not really mention one favorite song, but suggest you give them a try and I meanwhile hope that 2021 can bring them back to Europe.
It is interesting how I visited Greece, finding a cancelled festival and suddenly interesting Greek Progmetal bands find me. Hypnotic Nausea passed by me without me knowing and it turns out this was my bad. On their bandcamp page someone called them a blend of Queensryche and Tool. Well I can hear the latter mainly in the heavy bass being present. Queensryche not so much, also because that band did not release many long instrumentals. This album contains quite a few and even 11 minute opener Holy City almost hits the 8 minute mark before a voice kicks in. So is this mainly instrumental music interesting enough to keep your attention close? Yes it is, although it might not be for the impatient. When we arrive at The Priest this album shows it might also atract stoner fans. Actually that is also the case for some shorter instrumentals. The title track is where matters calm down, before final long song Inquietum Cor closes the album in style. This is a 2019 release, but the title of the album was predicting 2020. The Death of all Religions, seems to be right now that even in these days of world crisis all churches and mosques appear to be pretty empty.
I was drawn towards Novena as their vocalist is Ross Jennings of Haken fame. Well that is one of the vocals, as next to his clean voice Gareth Mason (Slice the Cake) gives us some grunts through the album. Apparently this band released an EP four years ago, but I missed that one completely. Further in spite of members having a past in progmetal or even tech death this album is released on Frontiers Records, known for their melodic hard rock albums and keeping the eighties alive. I saw two clips posted by Frontiers for Disconnected and Sundance and thought lets try this out and I ordered the CD. Now hear comes the shock: Frontiers made some sort of inverse marketing campaign. The two songs mentioned are by far the least interesting ones on the album. The last five songs are amazing and make this album a candidate for ending very high on my end of year list. Corazon, manages to mix flamenco handclapping with a Spanish female vocalist next to very strong progmetal. Closing song Prison Walls is an epic, which might even have been stronger as it would have ended after the wild and heavy eruption atround the 11-12 minute mark. This album was a very positive surprise especially after the clips posted. Only comment might be the lyrics are at times impossible to follow with so many paralel singing and tiny letters over pictures, but that might just be old man me. Must hear album of the month. .
No comments:
Post a Comment